Reducing body fat isn't a simple affair. We've written plenty of diet and exercise posts to help you get in better shape, good routines require quite a bit of planning. What's a simple way to start? Figure out exactly how many calories your burn each day and how many you have to burn to reach your goal.

Know the (Approximate) Magic Number: 3,500

Planning to lose 10 pounds, or any other weight-related goal, doesn't really tell you what's required to get there. You know you want to lose 10 pounds, and that will require diet and exercise, but you don't necessarily know how much less you have to eat and how much more you have to work out. You can answer that question pretty easily with one number: 3,500. That's a rough estimate of the number of calories required to burn in order to lose a pound. If you wanted to lose 10 pounds, you'd need to burn 35,000 calories. 35,000 calories burned is a much more specific goal than 10 pounds.

Casually Count Your Calories

How do burn that many calories? You take in fewer than you expend. Figuring out how many calories you consume every day requires a lot of tracking and you'll never get an exact figure, but if you look up the things you regularly eat and have a decent ideas of how many calories they contain you'll know enough to work with. If you want to play it safe, just round up. From there, you need to know how many calories you burn each day by sitting on your butt. For me, that's 1900. You can calculate your calorie burn here. Now all you have to do is add what you consumed in a day and then subtract the number you burn normally and burned through exercise:

This equation leaves you with a calorie deficit (or surplus if you consumed more than your burned). Once that calorie deficit reaches 3,500, you lose a pound. While this equation fails to account for the nutritional value of what you eat or how certain exercises help specific muscles, it's a simple way to set and achieve exercise goals because the outcome is easier to predict. While some may find calorie counting tedious, even when it's casual, having specific and simple math made everything much easier for me. The diet and exercise routine I've chosen makes more sense, and the impact of those choices is clear. Ultimately you have to pick a method that works for you, but if you like knowing the approximate impact of your decisions you'll appreciate how this little bit of math contributes to your better health.